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oil,stupid...

Gus toon from ages ago...

The minutes of a series of meetings between ministers and senior oil executives are at odds with the public denials of self-interest from oil companies and Western governments at the time.

The documents were not offered as evidence in the ongoing Chilcot Inquiry into the UK's involvement in the Iraq war. In March 2003, just before Britain went to war, Shell denounced reports that it had held talks with Downing Street about Iraqi oil as "highly inaccurate". BP denied that it had any "strategic interest" in Iraq, while Tony Blair described "the oil conspiracy theory" as "the most absurd".

But documents from October and November the previous year paint a very different picture.

Five months before the March 2003 invasion, Baroness Symons, then the Trade Minister, told BP that the Government believed British energy firms should be given a share of Iraq's enormous oil and gas reserves as a reward for Tony Blair's military commitment to US plans for regime change.

The papers show that Lady Symons agreed to lobby the Bush administration on BP's behalf because the oil giant feared it was being "locked out" of deals that Washington was quietly striking with US, French and Russian governments and their energy firms.

Minutes of a meeting with BP, Shell and BG (formerly British Gas) on 31 October 2002 read: "Baroness Symons agreed that it would be difficult to justify British companies losing out in Iraq in that way if the UK had itself been a conspicuous supporter of the US government throughout the crisis."

The minister then promised to "report back to the companies before Christmas" on her lobbying efforts.

The Foreign Office invited BP in on 6 November 2002 to talk about opportunities in Iraq "post regime change". Its minutes state: "Iraq is the big oil prospect. BP is desperate to get in there and anxious that political deals should not deny them the opportunity."

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/secret-memos-expose-link-between-oil-firms-and-invasion-of-iraq-2269610.html

the cabbage war...

In 2002 many British companies were suspicious that they might be locked out by US oil companies in the event of the US becoming the dominant power in Iraq. This was not a paranoid suspicion; early non-oil contracts awarded by the US-dominated administration in Baghdad in 2003 went to American corporations.

In the event Iraq has held three rounds of bidding for contracts to manage and develop Iraqi oilfields since 2008. BP along with China's CNPC is heavily involved in Iraq's largest oilfield, Rumaila, in the far south on the Kuwaiti border. Royal Dutch Shell with Petronas of Malaysia has the contract for the Majnoon field on the border with Iran. Exxonmobil and Royal Dutch Shell are developing West Qurna 1.

It has never seemed likely that the US and Britain invaded Iraq primarily for its oil. Reasserting US self-confidence as a super-power after 9/11 was surely a greater motive. The UK went along with this in order to remain America's chief ally. Both President Bush and Tony Blair thought the war would be easy.

But would they have gone to war if Iraq had been producing cabbages? Probably not.

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/patrick-cockburn-they-denied-it-was-about-iraqs-resources-but-it-never-rang-true-2269731.html

 

"aussie tony" - thief, war criminal & a mote in god's eye .....

Yes Gus,

"Aussie Tony" - thief, war criminal & a mote in god's eye ....

And not a word in our awful awstraylan media about these revelations.

We should hang our heads in shame for the wanton dstruction of one of the world's oldest civilisations .... the lies & deceit of Bush, Blair & Howard underscore the horrible truth of Trump's stated intentions in the middle east, should he succeed in becoming the leader of the evil empire & head of the coalition of criminal sychophants.

God save us.

 

"aussie tony" - thief, war criminal & a mote in god's eye .....

the oily patch...

Iraq Criticizes ExxonMobil on Kurdistan Oil Pursuits
By

BAGHDAD — A deputy prime minister overseeing the oil industry has issued a sharp rebuke to the largest American oil company operating in Iraq, ExxonMobil, over the company’s reported efforts to expand its oil holdings into the semiautonomous Kurdish region in the country’s north.

The statement from the official, Hussein al-Shahristani, said the central government had cautioned Exxon against pursuing oil deals in Kurdistan, which the government says will remain illegal until long-awaited rules can be worked out to split revenues among Iraq’s fractious regions.

Mr. Shahristani’s office issued the statement a day after The Financial Times reported that Exxon, based in Irving, Tex., and the United States’ largest petroleum company, had become the first major international oil operator to sign a contract in the Kurdistan region — a move the company has neither confirmed nor denied.

If Exxon did indeed sign a deal in Kurdistan, it is wading into a central controversy that has dogged Iraq since the American invasion.

Oil has long been the heart of Iraq’s wealth, and the invasion threw control of the rich reserves into question, exacerbating longstanding enmity between the Kurds and other Iraqis. Under President George W. Bush, the passage of an oil law to split revenues was considered a crucial benchmark to bring long-term peace to Iraq.

Critics of the oil companies that went to Kurdistan after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein’s government say they are pursuing development in the north in a manner that, far from contributing to stability through economic growth, has served to heighten ethnic tensions between Arabs and Kurds.

Many smaller oil companies, including American ones like Marathon and Hunt of Texas, have signed contracts with the Kurdistan Regional Government. But the larger companies had held back to ensure they retain deals for fields in the south.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/13/world/middleeast/iraq-criticizes-exxonmobil-on-kurdistan-oil-pursuits.html?_r=1&hp=&pagewanted=print

 

 

 

see toon at top...

our criminal media ignore the material drivers of war...

 

From Philip Roddis

 

The best comedians are the cleverest people on the planet. I’m grateful to a BTL comment on OffGuardian, below a piece of mine on Venezuela, for linking to this forty-five minute video. It has Robert Newman saying exactly what I try to say, but with vastly greater wit and panache, on the history of oil and, more generally, a materialist perspective on history.

Performed in 2006, it could have been yesterday given the clueless way we insist on viewing each “pro-democracy” intervention – Iraq, Libya, Syria and now Venezuela – on a case by case basis.

Given too the criminal way ‘our’ media ignore the material drivers of war. In both my two posts this week on Venezuela, I described corporate media as having “abdicated a core duty in their refusal to explore motives that cast a very different light on Western interventions sold to us as humanitarian”.

Newman treads the same ground but here too – damn the man – he does it better.

 

Read more and see video at:

https://off-guardian.org/2019/02/06/watch-robert-newmans-history-of-oil/

 

See also:

http://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/11276

 

 

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